1. Field
This invention relates generally to data communications, and more specifically, to a service gateway.
2. Related Art
Demand for data communication services for consumer and corporate computing devices has been rapidly increasing. Service providers deploy service gateways such as server load balancers or traffic managers to bridge host computers or computing devices with servers providing the data services.
Service gateways provide services either using a stateful processing method or a stateless processing method. Generally, in a stateful processing method, packets are processed as a stream of packets, and each packet in the stream are processed in the same way. In a stateless processing method, packets are processed discretely, where each packet is assessed individually. The stateful processing method may be preferred over the stateless processing method due to the security and control features that may be implemented, however, the resource requirements of such features may make the services difficult to scale. The stateless processing method may be preferred over the stateful processing method due to its scalability, however, this is at the expense of security and control.
Traffic managed by service gateways is rarely uniform, as conditions on a network typically fluctuate, at times greatly. Currently, system administrators are required to choose either a stateful processing method or a stateless processing method for a particular service address, weighing the costs and benefits of each method. System administrators are not able to realize the advantages of both processing methods for such non-uniform traffic.